Somewhere to call home, p.1
Somewhere to Call Home, page 1
Somewhere to Call Home
Cover
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
About the Author
Also by Elizabeth Jeffrey
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
One
Stella Nolan got stiffly down from the train and stood on the platform, her valise in her hand, her body rigid with uncertainty. The other passengers who had alighted at the same time milled round her, ignoring her, too anxious to get out of the biting late-afternoon wind and home to their families to pay any attention to the lonely figure waiting there.
It had been a long, exhausting journey; the trains had been dirty and crowded with all aspects of humanity, from weary and wounded soldiers relieved to be back from the horror of the trenches to excited shoppers laden with parcels, eager to celebrate Christmas. It was the first peaceful Christmas for four years, but the aftermath of war still hung over everything. In the towns that the train had passed through it was apparent that many of the shops and houses needed a coat of paint, and even the excitement of Christmas couldn’t mask the air of shabby weariness that prevailed in most of the people. Few families hadn’t lost a son, husband or brother in the trenches and the predominance of black mourning, or at the very least black armbands, in the jostling crowd added to the gloom of the winter afternoon.
Stella waited, scanning the platform as the crowd thinned, a tall, rather pale, anxious-looking figure. While she could never have been called pretty in the accepted sense, with her large, dark-lashed hazel eyes and regular features she was, nevertheless, strikingly attractive and she carried herself well. She was wearing a dark-blue ankle-length coat with a fur collar, and a matching fur hat perched on her auburn hair. Like most others, she wore a black mourning band on her sleeve.
She chewed her lip uneasily. She hoped they hadn’t forgotten she was coming, she had been told she would be met at the station. Then she relaxed slightly and gave a sigh of relief as she saw a tall young man in gaiters and a flat cap emerging through the smoke from the engine; he was obviously looking for her.
He quickened his step when he saw her. ‘Mrs Nolan?’ he asked with a slightly nervous smile, snatching off the cap to reveal a shock of black curly hair.
‘That’s right.’ She smiled at him with relief. ‘I take it you’re Mr Hogg?’
‘That’s me. Henry Hogg, Major Anderson’s man and general handyman at Warren’s End.’
‘Ah, yes, my… Mrs Nolan senior wrote that you would be meeting me.’
‘Can I take your bag, Ma’am? The trap’s just outside. I’m: afraid it’ll be a bit of a chilly journey, although I’ve put out a blanket for you to put round your knees.’
Stella gathered her coat more closely round her against the cold north wind as she handed him her valise. She noticed that he took it in his left hand and that he held his right hand and arm at a slightly odd angle. Since he was young and otherwise the picture of good health she assumed that he was yet another victim of the war that had just ended, but she didn’t like to ask.
But as he turned away to lead her to where the pony and trap were waiting she noticed that there was a deformity in his right shoulder.
‘No, Ma’am, as you can see, it’s not a war wound, I was born with it,’ he said without embarrassment. ‘It kept me out of the army; they said a hunchback wouldn’t be any use in the fighting.’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘But I tried to do my bit. I went to work in a munitions factory. And that was a hell hole if ever there was one.’
‘Well, it’s all over now,’ Stella said, hugging herself and shivering. ‘Bombs and shells won’t be needed any more, thank God.’
‘Aye, thank God. And with any luck them munitions factories’ll be shut down for good. Death traps, they were, I can tell you,’ he said savagely as he helped her into the back of the trap and tucked the blanket round her. She noticed that despite his deformity he had no difficulty in using his right hand and arm. He lowered his voice. ‘I was real sorry to hear about Master, er, Mr John,’ he said quietly. ‘To be killed like that, almost on the last day of the war…’ He shook his head. ‘Its a damned wicked, cruel thing, war is – begging your pardon at the language, Ma’am.’ Touching his cap, red with embarrassment at his slip of the tongue, he hastily climbed up on to his seat then flicked the reins and the pony set off. ‘Make yourself as comfortable as you can. It won’t be long before we’re there, Ma’am,’ he said over his shoulder as they rattled across the river bridge and began the climb up the hill to the town.
Stella didn’t reply. In fact, she was in no particular hurry to arrive at her destination, to meet the family of the wonderful man who in the course of less than three months had swept her off her feet, married her and left her a widow.
They had had so little time together. She caught her breath against the tears that still threatened as she remembered…
It had been love at first sight, which Stella had always regarded as a figment of cheap romances – until it happened to her. She was a VAD at Hill House, the convalescent home on the south coast where Captain John Nolan had been sent to recuperate after a nasty shoulder wound and battle exhaustion. John was there for eight weeks before he was declared fit for duty again. But those eight weeks had been long enough for them to meet, fall instantly in love and realize without any doubt that when the wretched war was over, which from all the signs wouldn’t be long now, they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
‘But why wait, darling? Why don’t we get married before I go back?’ he had asked impulsively as they lazed by the river bank, simply delighting in each other’s company, on a hot late-August day.
‘Oh, yes, please, John!’ she had replied without hesitation. Then, some time later, she’d pulled away from him and asked, ‘But what about your family? Won’t they object?’ Her own parents had been killed in a Zeppelin raid two years earlier and she had no other family.
He’d frowned. ‘Why on earth should they object? They’ll love you, just as I do. Well, not quite as I do…’ he’d grinned, and pulled her to him again.
‘But shouldn’t we invite them to our wedding, John?’
‘Darling, there simply isn’t time,’ he’d replied airily, uncaringly, since all his thoughts were for this lovely girl who had just consented to be his wife. ‘We’ll go and see them afterwards. You’ll get on well with my sister, she’s good fun.’
She pulled away from him. ‘I didn’t know you’d got a sister, John.’
‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? Yes, Rosalie. Her husband’s in the army. At least he was until…’ he stopped and gathered her to him again. ‘But we don’t want to talk about them now, you’ll see them in a week or two. At the moment I’ve got more important things on my mind.’
So they were married by special licence at eight o’clock one misty morning, on the last day of September, at a little church overlooking the Solent; he in uniform and she in borrowed pale-blue shantung and a floppy hat. They spent a memorable week at a tiny hotel in a nearby village, and had planned a further week dutifully visiting his home so he could introduce her to his family. But before they could do that, he was suddenly recalled to his unit in France and had to go back, carrying a slightly out-of-focus photograph of the two of them outside the church in his breast pocket.
‘It won’t be for long, darling, I promise you,’ he had said as she kissed him a tearful goodbye at the train. ‘This wretched war will soon be over and then I’ll be back with you. For good.’ But he was wrong. By the time the armistice was signed, five weeks later, he was dead; killed by a sniper’s bullet. And Stella was a widow.
His parents wrote to the daughter-in-law they had never met and kindly invited her to stay with them for Christmas, an invitation she had been glad to accept since the other alternative was Christmas alone in her dreary bedsit or offering to do extra shifts at the convalescent home.
‘Nearly there, ma’am,’ Henry Hogg called over his shoulder. She looked up, startled. She had been so busy with her thoughts that she had hardly registered that they had driven through the town and were now in a residential area on the outskirts. The houses here were mostly large, detached and standing in their own grounds.
‘Ah, here we are, Warren’s End.’ Even as he spoke Henry turned into a short gravelled driveway and Stella saw the house, looking exactly as John had described it to her, square ivy-covered red brick, double-fronted, with four steps up to a front door with an elaborate fanlight. But what John hadn’t told her was that it was an old house, a family house, a house that had nurtured the joys and sorrows of generations; a house whose long windows seemed to wink in welcome in the late-afternoon sunlight. A house with a character all its own.
The front door opened even before the trap had pulled up, and a rather austere-looking maid came forward. She was wearing a black afternoon dress an
d white frilly apron and a cap with long streamers hanging down behind.
She bobbed a sketchy curtsey.
‘Good afternoon, Ma’am. Madam says I’m to take you through to the drawing room straight away – that is, if you’re not too tired?’ She looked questioningly at Stella. ‘The family have waited afternoon tea.’
Stella smiled at her, but the girl’s expression remained wooden and faintly disapproving. ‘Then I wouldn’t want to keep them waiting any longer,’ she replied, pulling off her gloves. ‘I must say a cup of tea would be very welcome.’
‘If you’d like to take off your hat and coat, Ma’am, I’ll take them up to your room with your bag when I’ve shown you to the drawing room.’
‘Thank you… er?’
‘Maisie, Ma’am.’
Swiftly patting her hair into place as she passed the hall mirror, Stella followed the girl – who she judged to be in her early twenties, about her own age – across a large black-and-white-tiled hall cluttered with small tables, hat stands, a large elephant’s foot holding umbrellas, and an array of greenery in pots which were dominated by the aspidistra standing by the foot of the stairs in a large green jardinière on a tall stand. She noticed that the wide staircase, where a grandfather clock stood at the angle of the stair, was expensively carpeted in thick red turkey carpet. A telephone had pride of place on a small table opposite the front door, with a chair beside it.
Maisie knocked and pushed open a door opposite the staircase into a large, equally overfurnished room with a predominance of red plush. She bobbed a curtsey and stood aside.
‘Thank you, Maisie. You can bring in the tea things now that young Mrs Nolan has arrived.’ A rather plump late-middle-aged lady in black lace sitting beside the roaring fire waved the maid away and turned to look at Stella.
‘Stella, my dear. At last you’ve come. We’ve so longed to meet this wonderful girl our son married in such a hurry,’ she said. Her words were welcoming but her tone was cool and her smile didn’t reach her eyes, which were a quite startling blue. ‘Of course, he wrote and told us all about you, before…’ She broke off and fished for a black-edged handkerchief.
A man, clearly her husband, who had been sitting in an armchair on the other side of the fire, had got to his feet as Stella entered the room. He was of medium height, with the suspicion of a paunch, grey thinning hair and a thick, well-trimmed moustache. ‘Come now, Doreen,’ he said briskly. ‘Let the young lady get inside the door… She must be half-frozen after her journey.’ He smiled, a genuinely welcoming smile, at Stella.
‘Yes, yes, of course. What am I thinking of? Do come and sit by the fire, Stella.’ But her tone was lukewarm.
As Stella approached the fire, she was shocked to see the dark-haired young man who had been sitting on the settee attempting to drag himself to his feet with the aid of two sticks. Had he been able to hold himself upright it was clear he would have been some six feet tall, but once on his feet he stood hunched over his sticks, his handsome, clean-shaven face lined with pain.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Phil, don’t try to stand up,’ the young woman, obviously his wife, sitting beside him, said impatiently. ‘You’ll only draw attention to yourself.’ She turned to Stella and looked her up and down, frowning slightly at her long dark-blue skirt and loose white blouse with a floppy blue bow at the neck.
‘Our daughter, Rosalie,’ Roger Nolan explained, since Rosalie seemed in no hurry to effect introductions. ‘And Major Philip Anderson, her husband.’
Philip, propping himself on his sticks, so unable to shake her hand, smiled, gave Stella a friendly nod and murmured a few words of welcome before sinking back into his seat. Rosalie was a sharp-featured woman in her late twenties, her dark hair severely parted in the middle and plaited into two earphones. She was dressed completely in black, although her skirt revealed enough of her legs to announce that she was a ‘modern’ woman. Her blouse was plain to the point of austerity. Her only concession to femininity was the floppy bow at its neck. She hadn’t bothered to stand up, and she frowned as she shook Stella’s proffered hand.
‘Why aren’t you in proper mourning?’ she asked rudely. ‘John’s only been dead a couple of months.’
‘Nine weeks and three days, to be exact,’ Stella said quietly, slightly taken aback by Rosalie’s tone. Then, her voice firm, she added, ‘But he insisted that if the worst happened I was not on any account to wear black. He said he didn’t like it, and anyway it wouldn’t suit me.’ She gave a twisted little smile at the memory of his words and at how she had distracted him from speaking further about such a disagreeable subject. A faint flush rose to her cheeks as she recalled that it hadn’t been difficult.
She glanced round the room, at the numerous pictures and mirrors all draped in black crepe, the black ties of the men and the two jet-encrusted black-clad women, and knew how much John would have hated such an ostentatious display of grief. Her own loss was no less keenly felt because she kept it privately in her heart.
‘I’m sure Rosalie meant no criticism, Stella. She speaks before she thinks,’ Doreen said. ‘Although of course it is a little unorthodox for a wife not to go into full mourning for her husband.’ Her voice rose a little. ‘But I’m sure it’s of no consequence.’ Her tone implied the complete opposite. She managed to force a smile. ‘Well, now, come and sit beside me.’ She patted the chair next to her. ‘Naturally, we re all delighted that you’ve been able to come and visit us, my dear. Of course, you understand we shall spend a very quiet Christmas, under the circumstances.’ She gave a sad smile, her eyes once again moist with unshed tears.
Rosalie gave a barking laugh. ‘Under the circumstances? What on earth do you mean, Ma?’ she remarked acidly. ‘Our Christmases are never anything other than quiet!’
Her mother looked at her reproachfully. ‘That’s probably because there are no children here. If we had grandchildren…’
‘Oh, Mother, for goodness’ sake, not that again!’ Rosalie raised her eyes to the ceiling.
‘You really shouldn’t speak to your mother in that tone, Rosalie,’ Roger Nolan said mildly, from the depths of his armchair. It was clear he was not used to remonstrating with his daughter.
‘No, old girl. Let it rest,’ Philip said softly and took his wife’s hand. She pulled it away sharply, but said no more because at that moment Maisie came in with the laden tea tray and conversation ceased until she had settled it in front of Mrs Nolan, who busied herself with teacups and making sure everyone had a plate and napkin and a crumpet.
During tea the slightly stilted conversation was inevitably centred on John, what sort of a child he had been, the mad, impetuous escapades of his youth, his ambition to do his bit for England by joining the army. As Stella listened she realized that there was a great deal about John she hadn’t known and now would never know, and the enormity of her loss struck her yet again. Surreptitiously, she dabbed the tears from her eyes under pretext of blowing her nose.
‘You’re looking tired, Stella,’ Doreen remarked, choosing to misinterpret the action. ‘Was it a very arduous journey?’
‘Yes, it was, rather.’ Stella nodded and put away her handkerchief so that she could finish the last of the crumpet she had taken only out of politeness and eaten with difficulty. ‘I had to change trains several times and they were all very crowded and dirty. Smuts from the engine seem to get everywhere.’
‘Then perhaps, when you’ve finished your tea, you might like to go up to your room and rest until dinner?’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind. Yes, I think I should like that very much,’ Stella said, relieved, even though at the same time she recognized that she was being dismissed. She drained her cup and placed it back on the tray.
‘Rosalie, will you ring for Maisie to show Stella to her room?’ Doreen said.
‘No, its all right, Ma. I’ll take her up myself.’ Rosalie got to her feet. ‘It’s the green room, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Make sure she has everything she needs.’ Doreen turned to Stella. ‘Dinner will be at eight, but Maisie will bring hot water for you to freshen up in plenty of time.’
‘Thank you,’ Stella said again. Suddenly, she felt drained, both physically and emotionally and she realized what an ordeal it had been, coming face to face with John’s family without his comforting presence by her side. She got to her feet, but as she did so she suddenly felt the room start to spin in a most alarming manner. She remembered putting out a hand to steady herself, and then everything went black as she lost consciousness.
